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TiVo, Inc. | Company Profile, Marketing Contacts, Media Spend, Brands

TiVo Inc., based in Alviso, CA, is a provider of technology and services for digital video recorders (DVR). The company distributes the TiVo service through consumer electronics retailers, its online store at TiVo.com and agreements with television service providers. TiVo also provides marketing solutions for the television industry, including a platform for advertisers and audience research measurement.

“The Com Hem launch is particularly exciting for us,” said Thomas Rogers, Tivo’s CEO and president, in the company’s second quarter earnings call Aug. 27. “The offering just soft launched and will be followed by a much more aggressive marketing push towards the end of the year.

“We plan to showcase this implementation to a variety of other IPTV operators including international telcos, which we believe broadens the market opportunity for our products and services beyond the cable arena, which has historically been our focus,” Rogers continued.

TiVo has been highly active in launching new products and forming additional partnerships as part of its revitalization efforts the last two years.

The company’s Retail business focused in the second quarter on the launch of TiVo Roamio, its new DVR box-top unit for sale at $199. These efforts led to increased year-over-year subscriber acquisition expenses as the business incurred slightly increased marketing-related costs in preparation for the launch, said CFO Naveen Chopra.

TiVo Roamio faces competition from drastically cheaper options, such as video-streaming Google’s Chromecast at $35, Netflix subscriptions or paying per show through Amazon Prime or iTunes.

TiVo and Grouper, a technology-based social club, just announced a partnership that will integrate TV and movie themes into the Grouper experience. The alliance, which rolled out this month, will create integrated brand experiences in select markets by offering TV trivia during Grouper gatherings, themed parties and photo challenges.

The company only spent $4.2 million on measured media last year, according to Kantar Media, but it tapped Olson as AOR earlier this year to lead brand revitalization efforts.

Olson handles advertising, media, digital, PR and social media duties for TiVo, which has struggled in recent years as cable providers started offering DVRs and consumers moved online to watch their favorite shows.

TiVo’s revenues in the second quarter ended July 31 jumped 53.4 percent year-over-year to $100.1 million.

The company’s net profit soared to $268 million from a loss of $27.7 million a year ago. However, excluding the Cisco and Google settlement, TiVo posted a loss of $13.1 million.

During the period, TiVo added 238,000 net customers because of cable operator gains from Atlantic Broadband, Cable One, Com Hem, GCI, Midcontinent, and Mediacom. After the 33 percent increase, TiVo has 3.6 million customers, up from 2.7 million in Q2 2012.